RP328 Facing the Future

 RP328 Facing the Future

Waking up with someone else's face is the stuff of nightmare s and science fiction movies for most people. For accident victims left with terrible facial scarring and disfigurement, a face transplant is a ray of hope for being able to lead a normal life.
In normal facial surgery, tissue is taken from the patient's own body, and then joined onto his or her face—a procedure called skin grafting. A face transplant, however, involves taking the face of another person and then attaching it directly onto the patient.
A common misunderstanding is that the recipient will then look exactly like the donor. Instead, because the patient and the donor have a different bone structure, a third hybrid face is created.
The first successful face transplant was done in 2005 by French doctors. They transplanted the nose, lips, and chin of a brain-dead donor onto the face of a 38-year-old woman who had been viciously attacked by a dog. In 2010, a man injured in a shooting accident was given a completely new face, the first ever full face transplant.
This type of operation is especially complex as it involves carefully connecting the nerves, muscles, and blood vessels found under the skin of your face. This must be done so skillfully that the patient will later be able to move the new face in a way that looks natural. The procedure is so difficult that it sometimes takes over 24 hours to complete. Despite its difficulty, doctors have praised the face transplant over grafting, which usually makes the face look like a mask rather than allowing for natural expression.
One of the main dangers for patients is that their body tends to reject the new face. As a result, recipients of new faces must take special drugs for the rest of their lives to suppress their immune system. In 2008, a Chinese bear-attack victim who received a new cheek, upper lip, and nose, died because he took other medicine instead of the prescribed drugs. The recipient of the first ever transplant also died 11 years later, in 2016, from complications with her medication.
Even with these dangers, recipients of face transplants have expressed joy at being able once again to do the things that most people take for granted, like speaking, eating, and smiling.